My name is Don DeLeva, I am a Seattle based artist. I work mainly in acrylic on wood panel. My art vacillates between POP Surrealism and abstraction mainly focusing on portraits and the visualization of personality and perspective. Recently, I have been bringing both styles together to create a fuller more vibrant image. This site is dedicated to the ideas that inspire my work art. Thank you for visiting.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

As I go deeper in to this new phase of painting I start to realize that I am painting White Collar workers as Heroes and Villains, the major players in the game of a country's economic health. At this point I feel that I am working with the mythology of the white collar worker not to an end but recognizing their role in power from a world stand point.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

I believe these portraits are celebrations of the technological worker, the Tecky.
I wasn't sure for a long time why these portraits were coming out of me. At first I thought it had something to so with the 99% demonstrations, the bank debacles and the corporate corruption. Maybe this has something to do with it but it seems so negative and I wasn't doing research to find out more about these problems, so I knew this really wasn't what I was painting. It just didn't seem correct, the images were too comical for such a heavy topic.

Today I was writing an artist statement about my work and it occurred to me after seeing my Dia De Los Muertos portraits of 2 years ago that what I am painting are Techys.
Thus the cubism and angular lines with the business suits.

These are portraits of people who write code all day and invent the coolist new apps on your phone. They are celebrations of the people in technology.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

This is the first painting in my Suit series. This body of work is a comment on the restructuring of the banking industry and the core values of handling Americas money by large corporations and banks.

Monday, August 6, 2012

I find myself still in the middle of reinventing myself. My paintings seem to be about busy work right now. Figuring out what it means to paint with acrylics is redefining my imagery. Inspiration wise I seem to be floating between Guston and Franz Klien. Size wise I have shrunk down to 5x7, 5x5, 12 x 16s, mainly because of my neck problems. I hope soon I can find some groove because right now I feel like I am painting to be busy. This wall street tie and jacket series seems to predictable and illustrative.
At this point I do not want to become illustrative but I am wondering how much illustration people need to understand these paintings are not about abstraction.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Some people call me a Surrealist, I am not. I don't paint dreams. Some people call me a Hallucinatory. However, I am not tiring to get you to see something I didn't paint. There was a time I was tiring to do this, but now my work seems to be more about the act of painting and the final image is secondary. I am concerned about the quality work of the final result but the end images come about by crystallization of thought at the time of creation.

What I do take from the Surrealists is automatic thought. I add emotion from the Abstract Expressionists and use the everyday as an inspiration. It is really important to understand that I "find" myself working this way. After years of training as a printmaker and trying to end up with a specific image in the end felt like I was becoming an illustrator, I felt constricted and predicable. I see Illustration as the process of creating with a specific final image in mind, thus the "sketch" and the preliminary works that lead up to a planned out painting.

I am a discoverer, I paint to see the image crystallize. If I think an image is becoming too planed out I paint over it, sand it out or randomly spatter, drip or texturize the surface with thick paint or add objects like nails. These "problems" cause me to think of solutions that steer the painting in an unpredictable direction, which in turn gives me results I never could have planned out nor thought up.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

This week I was asked to create a work for a show based on a super hero, if you know me at all you'll know I picked IronMan. I thought about creating a work based on bankers being Heros but after the latest buffoonery with Morgan Stanley, Chase Manhattan and the Facebook stocks I realized that at least Tony Stark is fictional and seems to care a little bit for his fellow man.

So I took the painting below and started to create Ironman over it. Here is a phone shot of what it looks like now.

I know it's fairly pedestrian at this point but keep in mind that this is the beginning sketches. The idea at this point is to create several cells at once with a technique called dynamism.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

I paint on pieces until I feel then are finished. I know that sounds logical but how do you know when something is finished if you have no idea what the end result will be?

When I started creating art I was a Photo Realist, but after 3 years I got board of coping what I was looking at, besides I didn't see the point in poorly imitating a camera.

My Art is a log or journal of where my mind has been for the hours I have been working.
One thought leads into the next, that is why my work is busy and seems to be fragmented. This is how I am inspired to keep painting.

Here is an example of a painting I have been working on for the last 3 weeks.

The painting seems to be at half stage, although I can never be quite sure. I have some paintings go through 3 or 4 finished states before they are complete. I think it has to do with the fact that my skill has not caught up with where the painting is going. I have had paintings take 4 years to complete, that's working on them 2 to 3 hours a day. Some times I will show works because I think they are finish only to realize later on I need to go back in to them.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Untitled, Acrylic on panel, 8x10, 2012

My new room, graphite on paper, 8x8, 2012

Stroll on Wall, oil on panel, 20x30 2012

America or me?, oil on panel, 40 x40, 2012

Roots, graphite on Yupo paper, 8x11, 2012

Hedge Fund, oil on panel, 25x30 2012

Cut Throat, graphite on paper, 8x12 2012

White Collar 2, acrylic on panel, 8x8 2012

An innocent man, acrylic on panel, 8x8 2012

So here is some of the work I have completed in the last 5 months. I have made a move toward acrylics. After painting with oils for 20 years I needed to break my pattern to learn more about the images and ways to improve on the final outcome of the work.

I am also going back to my instinct of image. I got caught up in trying to sell art and as I say, you either make art to sell or you make it because you have something to say, blessed and cursed are those who's art speaks to the masses and is rewarded for it.
Blessed because of your material reward, cursed by the limitations, definitions and accolades of your supporters.

I have found after 26 years of creating, my original goal was to have a unique vision, one I forged myself from my mentors and heros. I wanted to be able to say that no one could create the art that Don DeLeva creates. I have achieved that goal my friends. Now, it's onto the important things in living that I ignored to complete my main life's mission!

I am trying to forget all that I have learned so the art and process can be its own entity. I know it might be hard to understand. It's like forgetting that you know how to count, you just do it. It's the way method, training and thinking become instinct. If you can do it right, you can grow it into something that becomes an ever unfolding path with everyday that can't exist without you but exists outside of you.

Currently, I am rebuilding my mind with programming, frontend development for the internet.
I am filling my head with JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3 and Jquery, because this has been clearly helping me to create art without art on my mind. I am painting now to escape an intentional thought process. That process is being used and exercised when I building websites and applications.